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How to access .co.uk sites and not .fr


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Aaagh, I've borrowed a computer and am trying to access Paypal. Type paypal.com and it takes me to paypal.com/fr which is confusing. I want to stay in English as there's some complicated stuff going on in the account and I want to know what it says. So I don't want the 'fr' suffix, just plain old Paypal.com

But it's defaulting to French ... what do I do ?

HELP!.
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The easiest way is to use a VPN to fool the site into thinking you are in UK.  What happens is that your connection in France is routed through a server in UK and the receiving website (Paypal in your case) only ''sees'' the UK server.  There is a free VPN that you can download (Expat Shield) that you can activate and deactivate at will.  (If you decide to download it they will ask if you want the Expat Shield toolbar - click No).  When using the VPN you will find each new page you load will have a banner advert at the top but there is a cross in the top right of the ad to close it - do this otherwise part of the underlying page is obscured.

The question to ask yourself is whether your friend is happy to have this program downloaded.

http://expatshield.com/

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Thanks, a good answer but I guess my friend wouldn't want this. I'm just baffled why I can't override the .fr suffix and put .com and get to the sites and search engines that I want. It's a case of the computer trying to be too helpful ... oh you're in France so you only want Ebay France and Paypal France, etc.

Is there another way I can a\ccess them do you know?

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[quote user="NormanH"]

I would advise against Expat shield which installs unwanted services and spyware on your computer.

[/quote]

Nowhere can I find any indication of spyware being installed with ES (or at least gave up after 20 or so Google pages).  Can you reference?

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[quote user="NormanH"]

I would advise against Expat shield which installs unwanted services and spyware on your computer.

[/quote]

Where is the spyware Norman? I've been using Expat Shield for a while now and not found anything untoward.

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[quote user="JK"][quote user="NormanH"]

I would advise against Expat shield which installs unwanted services and spyware on your computer.

[/quote]

Nowhere can I find any indication of spyware being installed with ES (or at least gave up after 20 or so Google pages).  Can you reference?

[/quote]

Well when I used windows I tried Expat Shield, and Active Ports showed it calling several addresses that I did not recognise

It also opened several advertising windows.

I posted some time ago about how to turn off the Windows services which it uses, only turning them on when you wish to use it, but I found it very dubious, and I preferred to avoid the hassle.

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[quote user="NormanH"][quote user="JK"][quote user="NormanH"]

I would advise against Expat shield which installs unwanted services and spyware on your computer.

[/quote]

Nowhere can I find any indication of spyware being installed with ES (or at least gave up after 20 or so Google pages).  Can you reference?

[/quote]

Well when I used windows I tried Expat Shield, and Active Ports showed it calling several addresses that I did not recognise

It also opened several advertising windows.

I posted some time ago about how to turn off the Windows services which it uses, only turning them on when you wish to use it, but I found it very dubious, and I preferred to avoid the hassle.

[/quote]

Not as dubious as "Active Ports" which you can no longer download as it was open to so many virus attacks they had to discontinue it.

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Active ports was attacked because it was useful in revealing stealthy processes, and this is exactly what you have with Expat Shield.

From another Forum 'its full of adware, port redirects and

worse is designed to leave ports open which means it leaves backdoors on

your PC. Anyone with a basic knowledge of Virtual Private Networking

(VPN) could then potentially access the PC where this software is

resident. I actually had three sniff attacks while testing it so overall

I would not recommend using it.'

http://www.andalucia.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=25275

I am no geek, but I don't like having active processes opening ports and calling addresses I don't recognise, especially if I am unsure how they work.

Perhaps someone who uses Expatshield can explain how it works?

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Expat Shield

is designed to be a complete security package.  Using 128 bit encryption, we

send everything over a secure tunnel, protecting traffic between the users and

our VPN server so no one in-between can snoop into what's going on. For wireless

devices, the most critical issue that Expat Shield addresses is securing the

data traveling from the client's computer to the Wi-Fi access point. 

Since all the

traffic goes through our secured secure, we assign users a UK based IP address.

 This means that websites have no way to know user's actual location or any

other personal information.  It allows users to stay private, secure and have

the ability to overcome censorship and access any website they want.

Link

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Norman, do you know what process is linked to the ports the program opens. If you do then try Googling the names and that should tell you what they do.

Ports can be a bit complicated if your not a techie (some techies find them difficult at times as well). As Expat Shield is such a well known and well used program I doubt they do anything dodgy else they would loose their customer base which they need to sell advertising.

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I don't use it any more, so I can't say. I think it is more that it leaves ports open after use, but I am no tecchy

Perhaps it is just the advertising that it reports back to ( as does google with analytics)

If people are happy with it by all means continue. I didn't intend to stir up a big debate

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